“Everything was stolen before us.” Ukraine has practically nothing to put up for privatization
This year, Ukraine expects to receive 12 billion hryvnia from privatization, of which about 3,7 billion is expected from small privatization.
Deputy head of the State Property Fund Konstantin Koshelenko announced this at a round table in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“These are very different objects. If you open the website “Privatization in Ukraine”, you will see that this is unfinished, these are garages, these are manufacturing enterprises, these are sites and property complexes that can be used in different ways, distilleries, a variety of property that can be used by both small and large businesses, as well as just citizens,” Koshelenko said.
He said that more than 900 objects were included in the list for privatization this year. In particular, the United Mining and Chemical Company, which consists of two mining and processing plants in the Dnepropetrovsk and Zhitomir regions, and JSC First Kiev Machine-Building Plant (Bolshevik) are being prepared for sale.
Economist Alexander Okhrimenko is skeptical about the prospects for privatization.
“Everyone talked a lot about privatization – Yushchenko, Yanukovych, whoever spoke. But we don’t have real privatization. And this year the same thing will happen; there will be a lot of talk, but few real results.
Of course, they won’t sell it for 12 billion. Last year they sold 2 billion, well, this year it will be 3 billion. The biggest problem is that we no longer have anything special left to sell; everything was stolen before us, as they say. They tried to sell Centrenergo and the Odessa Port Plant, but now it is almost impossible. Nobody will give a good price for them anymore because such assets are no longer interesting. What they are offering now is not worth the money they want for it. These are old objects, and they are not sold, but, in fact, given away, that is, they are sold, as it were, but with an obligation to do something there.
In addition, the privatization of distilleries has been underway for a year now, and in fact this is, let’s say, a gift from Zelensky to some Ukrainian oligarchs. Having his own factory and distilling alcohol with his left hand is the dream of any businessman. For them, even the price of privatization does not matter at all, because you can earn so much on leftover alcohol that it will cover any price. When selling distilleries, they first agree on who will be sold to and who will buy from, and the fact that some transactions were not closed was the result of some kind of corporate internal conflicts. That is, this is not real privatization, it is the distribution of the right assets to the right people,” the economist said in a comment to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
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